Sunday June 23, 2019

A car alarm on a feisty BMW temporarily disturbs the peace as I sip a lager at a pub a few blocks from Marble Arch, near a flat I rented the last time I lived in London. Sarah sits across from me reading a story by Helen Oyeyemi. It takes everything I possess to keep myself from throwing an ashtray through the car’s windshield. When the alarm goes off a second time, we take the hint. “Enough of this outrageous fortune,” I mutter to myself. “Time to cut and run.” But the car proves to be one of several environmental irritants encountered throughout the day. To put it plainly: things don’t go as planned. The London to which I’ve grown accustomed feels as if it’s been hijacked for the day — booby-trapped, sabotaged, reprogrammed to include pranks, gags, obstacles churned up by a trickster demiurge. “Something needs to change,” I decide. “It’s time for another dramatic alteration of consciousness. My patience is wearing thin.”

4 thoughts on “Sunday June 23, 2019”

My son went to the Tower of London on Friday, enjoying the armour but skipping the Crown Jewels due to excessive queuing time. He liked the ravens. Told me how the legend tells that the tower will fall if they leave. Told me how they clip their wings.

I skipped the Tower this time around, but my wife went and had a similar experience with long wait-times. She’s a Thomas More scholar, so the Tower was high on her list of places to visit. I’ve heard the ravens have been declining in number of late!